Blog Post

Could Facebook be your next software vendor?

It might sound crazy, but I think there’s an argument that Facebook could become a leading enterprise software vendor for the webscale world if the social-networking kingpin is so inclined. Over the past couple years, it has released details on a number of its internal efforts to automate and simplify the management of its massive infrastructure. As we continue to consume web applications, and cloud services and webscale data centers become more common, Facebook’s tools and expertise could be a cash cow.

Other companies likely would, and certainly should, be willing to pay large sums of money for Facebook’s webscale expertise. Twitter, Reddit and — just a few days into its life as a cloud provider — Apple (s aapl) have already established reputations for shoddy uptime. Other growing companies such as Zynga and LinkedIn, (s lnkd) and even the next generation of webscale companies, are also going to run into the same problems that Facebook has. Why recreate the wheel trying to solve problems Facebook has already solved?

It’s already happening elsewhere. Google (s goog) has converted its deep expertise in running a webscale search engine into its wide array of enterprise services that includes Google Apps and App Engine. Yahoo (s yhoo) spun off Hortonworks to capitalize on its extensive Hadoop knowledge. These companies had developed internal skill sets in next-generation technologies, and when markets emerged for those skills, they productized them.

Systems management software and support is a huge market, but few, if any, legacy vendors have products and knowledge that easily translate into webscale environments. Facebook could stand to make a lot of money by consulting with customers on how to build their data centers and architect their applications, and then selling them the software tools to keep those apps up and running. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it did.

One Response to “Could Facebook be your next software vendor?”

Way back in 2008, I was thrilled when Google first introduced the GAE. My first thought, then, was … why am I ever going to need my own servers if I can run my software on Google’s platform. Unfortunately, Google messed up with pricing.

FB has time and again proven that it has a solid platform. If it can price it right, it would be a great platform on which to develop cloud based apps … specifically, non-FB apps.